US handset giant Motorola Inc yesterday inaugurated an ultra-wideband (UWB) research center in Taipei, the company's first unit of its kind in Asia.
The "Connected Home Taiwan Technology Center" is aimed at developing technologies to accelerate advances in digital home entertainment. It is Motorola's second research and development center in Taiwan, after the handset ODM (original design manufacturing) center that was established here last year.
The company plans to open another UWB research center in India later this month.
UWB is a wireless technology that transmits a low-powered signal over a wide radio spectrum.
"Taiwan's leading position in the industry and bountiful talent base are major reasons why we chose to set up our technology center here," said Simon Leung (梁念堅), Motorola's regional president for the Asia-Pacific region.
The center, which currently employs 170 people, will concentrate on applied research in UWB solutions, fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) technology and other wideband-telecommunication devices, such as set-top boxes and cable modems for digital home products, he said.
Motorola is targeting the huge markets in Japan, Korea and China in developing FTTH technology, said Eric Lee (李榮宏), design-engineering director of Motorola Connected Home Solutions.
With a bandwidth of 100MBps, fiber-optic technology can deliver high-definition TV programs and support Internet applications and devices better than current broadband systems, but Taiwan's slow pace in developing the technology locally and adopting a digital broadcasting system has made it lag behind Japan and Korea in this sector, Lee said.
Japan currently has over 2 million households using fiber-optic data sources, but it will take about two years for Taiwan to reach 1 million users, Lee said.
The center is also expected to create lucrative business opportunities for Motorola's local partners such as Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (
Last year, Motorola procured about US$2.05 billion worth of handset components and 20 million ODM cellphones from local partners. The 20 million ODM handsets accounted for 40 percent of Taiwan's handset exports last year, Leung said.
The company will purchase more handsets in Taiwan this year, he said, without specifying the figure.
Motorola recently also placed contract orders for its third-generation (3G) mobile phone handsets with Compal, Taiwan's second-largest contract manufacturer of notebook computers. Motorola also works with Vibo Telecom Inc (威寶電信), an affiliate to Compal, to tap into Taiwan's 3G telecommunication market.
Commenting on BenQ Corp's (明基) acquisition of Siemens AG's handset unit, Leung said that "consolidation is the trend in the industry ... there are too many players in the sector."
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